


Prowlers

by spooky_fox



Series: Loose Ends [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-20 22:43:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14903528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spooky_fox/pseuds/spooky_fox





	Prowlers

When Spender tried to enter his apartment he found something blocking the door from the inside. His heart stopped for a second and then started to beat at double speed. Ignoring the protests from his aching shoulder, he barged the door open and stood staring numbly at the chaos. His apartment had been ransacked. Every drawer had been pulled out, its contents scattered. Shelves had been pulled down, chairs overturned. They had even slashed open the sofa cushions and pulled out the foam stuffing.

Spender righted a chair and sank slowly into it, rubbing his face. He doubted they had found what they were looking for. Any documents that might lead to William he had long since destroyed. He hadn't even trusted the name 'Van de Kamp' to paper in case it fell into the wrong hands. Whoever they were, the intruders had left empty-handed.

Unless they hadn't left.

He sat up, electrified, every sense on alert. Even his skin seemed to be feeling for a hostile presence. As silently as possible he got to his feet and moved towards the kitchen. Grabbing a knife from the floor, he picked his way through the mess. Two CDs slid from a pile on the floor with a clack and he winced.

At the bedroom door he hesitated, listening hard. Gently he pushed the door open and sprang back. Nothing moved. The room was empty. The bathroom was behind him. Spender whirled wildly around, swinging the knife and almost overbalancing but there was no one there. Probably a good thing, he thought. He must look deranged, spinning around slashing the air. He suppressed a hysterical urge to giggle.

As the adrenaline faded, he began to tremble violently all over. He kept a white-knuckled grip on the knife though his legs shook so that he could barely stand. A shower. That's what he needed. Then he could start to clear up some of this mess.

At first he was reluctant to close his eyes in case They were there when he opened them. Firmly he told himself he was being silly. He was alone and in any case, he would be in real trouble if They found him with soap in his eyes. Gradually the warm water soothed away some of his anxiety. Without really meaning to, he began to plan. He needed something in place, some measures to keep his home safe, to begin with. He’d never get a good night’s sleep if he was constantly listening for an intruder and it would be a small comfort not to worry about being robbed while he was out. Although it was unlikely that They would try his flat again having found nothing this time. Perhaps they would leave him alone entirely. He should be so lucky.

Out of the shower he examined the purple-black bruise spreading over his left side, reflecting again on how incredible it was that he hadn't broken any bones. He cleaned his palms with iodine and wrapped them, stinging, in bandages like a boxer which made him feel a little tougher. He had half a plan and he was, at least, clean. It was enough to make him feel almost confident.

Even with this energy, it took Spender almost all afternoon to clean up his flat. Between that and a visit to a few stores, he was fast asleep by 8:30pm. About four hours later there was the soft tread of someone on the threshold and the barely perceptible snick of the lock being picked. As quietly as cats the three men came in, guns fitted with silencers at the ready. Almost immediately the high pitched wail of a siren filled the flat, along with a thump and what sounded like hundreds of marbles spilling onto a wooden floor. The lock picker swore and turned to silence the alarm but slipped on what were, in fact, hundreds of marbles spilled on the floor. He fell back into the man behind him, causing him to hit his elbow on the door handle and drop his gun. The third man sidestepped the the others, moving to find their assailant, but also slipped and fell, hitting his head on the corner of the coffee table and lying still.

By this point, lights were coming on in other apartments as the neighbours were awoken by the commotion. Spender, armed with a baseball bat, came racing from the bedroom and caught the second man with a massive overhand swing, knocking him to the ground. The first man managed to get his feet under him and lunged at Spender, driving him into the wall. Spender grunted in pain but he still had his hands free and he drove the handle of the bat once, twice into his attacker's head and pushed free. There were running feet and raised voices in the hall now. The men hesitated. Evidently they hadn't meant to be discovered. A hundred questions swirled in Spender's head but all he managed to shout out was "Who are you?" before the two men bolted through the door and were gone.

Spender picked his way over to the third man, still lying by the coffee table. He didn't move. When Spender made to remove his balaclava he found it soaked in blood. He was dead. Spender sat back on his haunches. From the back of his mind, where he kept the memories he tried not to remember, came a sense of deja vu. This wasn't the first time he had been here, sitting stunned, with a dead man on the siting room floor. He'd never thought he'd be in that position again. A weak chuckle turned into a retch as his stomach reacted against the stress. He rubbed his face, inadvertently smearing blood across his mouth. Somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed but he barely registered them. So, when the police arrived, this was how they found him, sitting on the floor opposite a dead man and surrounded by marbles.


End file.
